Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson is a novel written about the lives
             of several unfortunate people who share the same past, either indirectly or
             directly. The murder trial of Carl Heine brings these people together
             again, in the present. It Takes place on the small Island San Piedro. Snow
             Falling on Cedars is riveting to the finish. The casts of characters have
             clearly lived full, deep, meaningful, painful lives. The descriptions of
             them by David Guterson are increasingly vivid, leaving the field of the
             On San Piedro Island, Kabuo Miyamoto goes on trial for the murder of Carl
             Heine, a local fisherman. It is December 1954 and Kabuo faces his troubles
             with dignity and silence, which the island's white residents see as proof
             of a lack of remorse. The islands residents are careful not to make enemies
             and over the years, this habit has developed a code of silence. Beneath the
             calm of San Piedro there is a destructive tension between the white and
             Japanese residents. But the hatred and prejudice common on San Piedro did
             not begin with the war. The war simply unleashed and old hatred that lay
             beneath the surface. While the war was still being fought, Etta Heine
             robbed the Miyamoto family of the land her husband had agreed to sell them
             years before. Kabuo could do nothing except wait for an opportunity to
             "Identity was geography instead of blood" [p. 206]
             "People make enemies reluctantly, knowing that an enemy on an island is an
             enemy forever" [p. 439].
             In a community of "five thousand damp souls" as described by David Guterson
             in his novel, Snow Falling on Cedars. A community that concentrated a
             variety of ethnicity, among them was both Whites and Japanese. As a result
             of the racial differences, racism has came into existences and have
             impacted the life of both children...